“They will live to swim another day,” is how RSMAS graduate student Austin Gallagher summed up the move this week by Florida officials to ban several shark species from being fished out of state waters.
Science is critical to ensure effective environmental policies and Austin and Dr. Neil Hammerschlag, RSMAS’ resident shark expert and assistant professor at the Abess Center for Ecosystem Science & Policy, demonstrated how to make that happen. Over the last year they supplied critical scientific data to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission that revealed tiger and hammerhead sharks are quickly disappearing from Florida waters and needed protection before it’s too late.
Scientists estimate that northwest Atlantic shark populations have declined by over 80% in the last two decades. The reason why tiger and hammerheads are so vulnerable, according to Neil, is because of their low reproductive rates. They are slow to mature, not reaching maturity until around 10 years old, and only giving birth ever three years.
Neil points out that current tiger and hammerhead shark population’s levels are vastly different between Florida and the Bahamas. He believes this is due to the proactive conservation laws in the Bahamas, where shark fishing and longline fishing, which takes a large number of sharks as accidental bycatch very year, are banned.
Austin, a second-year Ph.D. student, said the new Florida law will also give a boost to sharks across the greater Caribbean and rest of the southeast Atlantic as well. In conjunction with the RJ Dunlap Marine Conservation Program is studying which shark species are most vulnerable to overexploitation. He believes this new law demonstrates that the wildlife commission realizes the need to protect the ocean biodiversity.
The new measures, which goes into effective Jan. 1, 2012, prohibits the harvest, possession, sale and exchange of tiger sharks and great, scalloped and smooth hammerhead sharks harvested from state waters. RSMAS shark researchers showed how scientific information is critical to ignite government action.
Read more about this new shark law here.
– Annie Reisewitz
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DAMSL is now making its way on to Google Earth in a series of photos slideshows and fishy tales, as part of Mission Blue’s Explore the Ocean project. So, the next time you are exploring the ocean in Google Earth take a dive with DAMSL.